iPhone X Animoji

A new feature of the iPhone X is the ability to create and send animated character videos made by using the Face ID cameras to capture your facial movements. You can choose between several fun characters and send the resulting video to anyone, not just iPhone X users.

So let's take a look at what may be the most fun but least useful new feature of iPhone X. It is the new animoji feature. So animoji - animated emoji. It's something that Apple's introduced using the cameras at the top of the iPhone X screen. So those cameras are what face ID uses to capture basically a 3D image of your face. It's going to use that to capture the expressions on your face and translate that into movements for these animated figures.

I've started a new message here in the Messages app. I'm going to now tap that little app icon to the left of the text field at the bottom. When I do that I get various different things. You can see I can tap at the bottom of the screen, you know, to go to the feature I want to use. But the second feature there is the animoji feature. You can see what it's doing. It is looking at my face and it's mapping what I'm saying. Not just the audio of what I'm saying but my facial expressions. So I can close one eye, lift my eyebrows, open my mouth, that kind of thing.

I can choose between several different characters here. This monkey character, a robot, a cat. It's even getting when I move my head back and forth or lift it up and down. It's doing a lot of things. Not just mapping words to mouth movements. So it's pretty advanced.

You can, when you want, hit the record button and record something. So let's go to the fox one here and I'll record a message. Hi, I just wanted to check on and see what we're doing for dinner tonight. Now that I've stopped recording I can send it with that little up arrow button and I could also hit the Trashcan button there. Also now I've got that little button there where it's going to play it back. I can use that to kind of preview it.

Now when I send it, it gets sent and the cool thing is it's being sent as a little video. So you don't need an iPhone X to receive this. As a matter of fact you don't even need an iPhone. You can receive this on your Mac in Messages, you can receive this on an android phone. You're going to get this little video. I've even been able to just drag and drop the video out of Messages on my Mac to the desktop and it appears there as a little video that I could use and save just as a regular video.

So it's a cool new feature. It comes, of course, with the audio, with the animation and all that. It's just a little fun thing that you could do in Messages. I suppose that if you and the person you're talking to both have iPhone X you could go back and forth with this. Hopefully in the future we'll see more characters that can be involved instead of just this small set. I'd even like to see some more serious ones. These are all kind of fun and kind of childlike. Probably a good way to start but I'd like to see some that are just kind of normal looking ones. Or maybe just some simple ones. Hopefully if this feature is successful Apple is going to continue to develop it like that. It seems so far that people that I've sent them to, that didn't really know about this feature, thought this was pretty neat. So I expect this to be talked about a lot in the upcoming weeks as Apple continues to develop it.

Comments: 6 Responses to “iPhone X Animoji”

Karen Howard Brown

11/9/17 @ 8:32 am

Neither iPhone nor iPad, both running IOS 11.1, show up with this feature (not that I need it, but…). An article in yesterday’s MacWorld Daily said, if it didn’t show up, to go to the App Store and download it. Animojis on the App Store, however, is not this feature. There’s another app, EmojiMe, that animates you, but it’s not the same either.

So, what’s up? And…how do you get rid of something like Animojis once you’ve installed it. (I’d like a demo on how to get rid of many of them.)

Karen: Do you have an iPhone X? This is a feature of the iPhone X, and not any other iPhone or iPad. There is no App Store download, it is just a part of the Messages app. Did you install some apps? If so, just delete them as normal (https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207618)

Lauren Eisen

11/9/17 @ 10:46 am

is there a way to get this to play in fb messenger, not having any luck

Lauren: No. This is a feature of the iOS Messages app. Facebook would need to build their own thing.

Karen Howard Brown

11/9/17 @ 2:21 pm

Ah, so every app that has any remote connection to Messages shows up (The Weather Channel, Yelp, Dropbox, Gas Buddy…). My take on it is that Apple needs to have choices in Settings to show or not show. Gets crowded and confusing, doesn’t it.

No, no iPhone X—evidently didn’t hear that in the video! Sorry. (I’m stickin’ with 7.)

Ernie Cox Jr

1/13/18 @ 8:32 pm

U can save the Animoji to the Photo folder on the fone, and then add it to what ever u want. Fb, emails, etc.